DC Film Society: Adam's Rib June 2020 (AFI Docs)

AFI DOCS 2020: The Virtual Documentary Film Festival

AFI DOCS, America’s preeminent documentary festival, had to reinvent itself this year. With the DC area’s movie theaters still closed due to COVID-19 restrictions, this year’s festival, running from June 17-21, is entirely online. Tickets are available here. Festival Director Michael Lumpkin recently talked with me about this year’s changes and highlights:

Adam Spector – Let’s cut to the chase. Many film festivals in the current environment have either postponed or canceled. Why was it important to you for AFI DOCS to go forward?
Michael Lumpkin – It was important because this is what we do, bringing film to audiences, it’s why we’re here, our vision. It took us a while to figure out what we were doing and how we were doing it, but canceling was never really an option. We knew there would be a way to do this. We weren’t sure what it was, but there were a lot of films that were in the pipeline. A lot of films that were going to be in the festivals that had to cancel in the spring, that really needed a platform to be presented, whether that’s in a theater or online. So yeah, we were determined from the beginning to figure this out.

AS – What would be the most important information for people to have about the way the current festival is configured?
ML – When we were putting this virtual festival together we tried to maintain some aspects of the film festival in a real theater experience, so we wanted it to not just be like watching films online. But that there was a curated program that was being presented, that there were a lot of different films to see. We wanted it to be structured in a way where there were new choices, a new slate of films every day of the festival just like when you’re on the ground, so that people will come back each day to catch one of the films showing that day.

AS – So at the end of the day will those films still be available or will those be taken down and then the new slate put up?
ML – Different sections of the festival are accessible in different ways. We have special presentations, which are appointment viewing. They are films that are starting at a certain time each evening and only play at that point. That’s their only screening.

Our feature section, which is certainly the bulk of the festival, all of those films are available for 24 hours, and there’s a new set of films that become available each day. So starting at midnight, there's a group of films that are available and then the next day is a whole additional, another set of films, and then ones the day before are not available beyond that night.

Then there are some films which are available all throughout the entire festival. Our Cinema Legacy section is available throughout. We have three episodic series that we’re showing and some of those are available just one day. There's a longer series that’s available over four days. But our feature films are, day by day, a different group of films available.

AS – One film, in particular, jumped out at me just because of the timing. Obviously, when you selected Women in Blue you had no idea about what would happen with the Minneapolis Police Department in the past few weeks. But do you think that documentary will, even though it’s obviously not about George Floyd, that it will shed some light on the environment that led to what happened?
ML – It definitely does. This is a film we programmed before this [the George Floyd murder] happened. This is true with a number of films in the festival, which I think speaks to the work that documentary filmmakers do. The filmmakers are working on their film for a year or sometimes many years, investigating a story or digging into a situation or digging into a character. It’s a long, long process for most documentary films.

I think that Women in Blue as an example, when you see the film it becomes evident that the filmmaker was looking at something that was going on with that police department, and not knowing that this was going to be happening at this current point in time but they saw something they felt needed to be shown, needed to be presented and discussed within the documentary format. Nobody knew exactly what would be happening but several films are relevant in a lot of different ways and have become even more relevant than when we first saw them when we programmed them in the festival.

AS – Besides Women in Blue, what would be some other examples of films that have become more relevant since you programmed them?
ML – There are a number of films that deal with being in a general election year, leading up to the election in November and where the country is in terms of political discourse and what are the conversations. There’s one film, And She Could Be Next, which looks at the elections of 2018 and women who were running for office in different states, looking specifically at women of color running for political office in the US. You’re there with them as they’re campaigning and we know some of them won, some of them lost. But a lot of these women are very much still actively working and are actively part of trying to change what this country is, culturally and politically. Stacey Abrams is one of the women in the film. She’s very much a part of how this country is changing and trying to change around voting rights. A lot of films are looking at that part of what's going on in our country and that discussion elevates and intensifies. I think the films are going to be just more and more relevant for people to see and to be part of the conversation.

AS – Your opening night film, Boys State, looks like it examines some similar themes, but from a slightly different vantage point by looking at young men who are going through the machinations of a political system. Is that film going to give us hope, or give us fear?
ML – Both (laughs). A little of both. It’s interesting. One of the reasons that it’s such a great film is that it takes what we’re dealing with in terms of politics and governance in our country and to see that played out in the program that puts high school students in that world and have them go through the steps of creating a government and people being elected to be leaders and doing all those things in a concentrated time. It shows you how deep the system is running in our country. So you wonder how much are these students just mirroring what's actually going on to this country, how much of what these students are doing is new and will, and as they get older and some of them do take leadership positions, how they might be changing, and how they might not. It gives you an interesting new perspective on how the government is run and what it takes.

AS – Your closing night film also has a different perspective on politics: Jimmy Carter, Rock & Roll President. If you had asked me who the first rock & roll president was I probably would have said Clinton. Do you think this film is going to surprise people?
ML – I think so. It gives us a much deeper understanding of who Jimmy Carter was. We see him on this side of his presidency, and that’s a certain perspective you have on a President when they’re out of office. What’s so refreshing and informative about the film is that you’re getting to see him on that side of his presidency, before his presidency and who he was and what he was interested in and also how he used rock and roll music, and those musicians to help him win the Presidency, and how they were a major factor in getting his campaign off the ground.

AS – Speaking of surprises, your Guggenheim Symposium Honoree is Lee Grant. When I thought of her before, I knew she had been blacklisted, and I knew some of her feature work, but I need to admit I wasn’t aware of her work as a documentarian.
ML – I had the same admission myself (laughs), until I learned about her.

AS – Do you think the symposium is going to open people’s eyes about the breadth and scope of her work?
ML – Definitely. One thing that made sense to me, her progress through her career in the film industry, and coming to Hollywood from Broadway, becoming an actress, getting an Oscar nomination right out of the gate. Then she was blacklisted and she didn’t work for over a decade and then her coming back and doing great work on the screen, winning an Oscar. There was a point where she was trying to find her way in this industry as an actress of a certain age.

In the 70s the AFI started the directing workshop for women. It was a film directing workshop targeted to women who were already working in the industry but not as directors. It was to increase women in the director’s role in the industry. You could come to the class as a cinematographer or a writer or an editor or an actress. She came in the first year of the program in ‘74, and went on to direct both fiction and non-fiction but her nonfiction work is certainly what we’re highlighting at AFI DOCS, and this is work that is surprisingly and in many ways infuriating that it’s as relevant today as it was when she made these films in the 1980s and in the early 1990s. She made a number of films for HBO and PBS. Her documentaries are really digging into important issues in the country like homelessness. She made a film called Down and Out in America, which was looking at three or four different communities in the US and about how what was going on at a larger level in the country. Corporate farming taking over small farmers and people losing their farms and their livelihood because corporations were taking over the farming business. And also looking at homelessness in Los Angeles, which is today just as much of a problem. They’re very, very good documentaries. The films are very relevant to what’s going on and it’s frustrating that some of the problems still like this continue to exist in our country even after these many decades.

AS – In addition to Lee Grant’s films you're showing three other older films in the Cinema’s Legacy section. Why did you pick these three films? Were they underappreciated when they first came out or was there a particular tie-in to what’s going on today?
ML – Every year we just consider different topics what was relevant this year and we were looking at, again, the general election. There’s going to be national political conventions happening in some form or another this summer. And then there was a film that was restored this year, the restoration came out a few months ago, called Nationtime - Gary, which was about black national convention that was held in Gary, Indiana in 1972 and it was organized to be like a Republican or Democratic National Convention. It brought together the black community from all across the US to work together and to organize to change the country in a number of ways.

We decided then, with that film, we were looking and found other films, which were also made in the past that were looking at how communities in the United States had organized on a national level, to make change, politically, and culturally in our country. So one of the other films, Sisters of ’77, is about a women's conference that took place in 1977, in Houston. It was, again, a national conference, women coming in from all across the US. It was actually funded by the US government under President Carter, as a connection back to that film. It was the same thing, women coming together to organize work to advance women's issues at a national level.

The third film is Freedom on my Mind, which is a story about communities in Mississippi in the 1960s organizing around access to voting for the African American community and Mississippi and organizing to change that situation and people in those communities working for voting rights, and that eventually their organization and their work led to them going to the 1964 Democratic National Convention and going there demanding to be seated, as the delegation from Mississippi.

AS – Fannie Lou Hamer?
ML – Yes, Fannie Lou Hamer. It’s about organizing that started locally in Mississippi but ended up on the national stage at the convention, demanding that they say we’re the delegation that represents the people, not the other (segregated) delegation. That was the theme we found so that we’re around that same subject area of organizing on a national level, and doing this in a way to really push the issues and changes and progress forward.

AS – In the short films you have Blackfeet Boxing: Not Invisible and San Diego, both about Native Americans. There seems to be a dearth of docs about Native Americans, or maybe just I haven't seen many. What attracted you to those films and do you think that they could lead to more documentaries about Native American communities?
ML – Yeah, I think they will. They should and they will. Blackfeet Boxing I think is interesting because it’s going to be on ESPN, so it’s getting a national platform, which I think is very key to visibility for the work and these stories and that can only help to bring even more stories to the table about and by Native Americans.

AS – On a different subject, you have Rebuilding Paradise , a film by Ron Howard about the California wildfires and then Dads, a film by his daughter Bryce Dallas Howard about fathers, including her father. Was that just a coincidence that you had both of them or did you want to tie the two of them together?
ML – Yes, I mean it’s coincidence that you have films by a father-daughter team. I was talking to Bryce Dallas Howard to get a Q&A with her. It’s that movement, actors moving into directing. Her father did it. She did it. Lee Grant did it. So it’s something that happened the two that are Howard films, if you will. It’s just coincidence. They're from different distributors. Bryce’s film is going to be on Apple TV+. Ron’s film is National Geographic. I think it’s just a coincidence that they both happen to be made in the same year and they’re going out at the same time but they’re both great films, they're very different.

AS – I know you love all of the AFI DOCS films but are there any ones that if you’re on an elevator you'd want people to know about?
ML – I think that because I was talking to Bryce Dallas Howard the other day. I watched her film again before I was speaking with her but it struck me that there’s so many films in the festival that are dealing with the issues in our country, in our world. They’re important films, they’re great films and her film was about dads.

AS – I need to ask, are you going to be showing it on Fathers’ Day?
ML – No, we’re not (laughs), but leading into Fathers’ Day. You’re looking at all these different dads all around the world and how they are dads and how they struggled being dads and it was, it was just very refreshing, and it’s funny and charming. But it’s also showing you how dads are dads. How do dads learn to be dads and yeah and it’s just a very delightful film, and I would recommend that definitely.

You can learn more about AFI DOCS here.

Adam Spector
June 16, 2020